School districts in the Great Lakes Bay Region are set to receive a healthy slice of a recent $10 billion federal aid bill to hire back and retain educators.

The Michigan House of Representatives has approved distributing the state’s $312 million share based on enrollment, including about $9.8 million for school districts in Bay, Midland and Saginaw counties.

The plan awaits state Senate approval.

The federal money would come as grants to bring in teachers and aides or to restore $154 in per-pupil funding over two years.

While the federal bill was initially designed to get 4,700 teachers back to work in Michigan, area school leaders still have many questions, including how the money can be spent.

“There is that danger of hiring teachers, running out of the money, making layoffs, then paying unemployment still out there, so it would be very prudent for districts in their hires to get the best bang for the buck,” said Bangor Township Superintendent Shawn Bishop, in Bay County.

Carrollton School District Superintendent Craig C. Douglas hopes to save the federal money for a rainy — if not stormy — day. His Saginaw County district would get about $350,000 under the House plan.

“I think we’re heading for a financially catastrophic situation in this state,” Douglas said. “We’re operating on borrowed time. I would recommend to my Board of Education that it try and plan for the storm, which is expected to hit in Carrollton and in all the other little communities in 2011.”

Douglas said he wouldn’t recommend Carrollton hire any teachers with the federal money.

“Fortunately we have no one on layoff so we have no one to call back,” Douglas said. “But moving forward, we might be able to avoid layoffs.”

While the U.S. Department of Education says the funds will keep more teachers in classrooms, critics of the bill call it a bailout for teachers’ unions.

Michael Van Beek, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center, a free-market think tank in Midland, said the bill could keep school boards from making tough decisions to clean house and run a leaner school district.

He said the bill will bring back teachers with higher seniority that get paid much more than a teacher with a beginner’s salary, so job numbers are inflated.

And most charter schools thought they wouldn’t receive their share of the money because they technically work for private companies. But that may not be the case.

Bay County Public School Academy Principal Jennifer Parrish said after talks with Mosaica Education, the managing group of the Bay County charter school, there was an “inadvertent” loophole in the bill’s language. She said she was told Mosaica Education officials are in talks with state officials to fix the language.

Due to the growth of the charter school over the past couple of years, Parrish said the school hasn’t had to lay off any teachers.

"There hasn't been a concern in keeping staff. We will probably add some extra positions and supplement other positions with some extra help,” Parrish said.

Bay City Superintendent Douglas Newcombe said the money is welcome, but it’s not the action that he wants from lawmakers.

“This is just a bandage on a problem,” said Newcombe. “There’s no comprehensive thinking to addressing how to fund things like education.”